because you're the god of a shrinking universe

I hate Garrison Keillor.

Secret because I'm from Nebraska - part of the southern half of Garrison Keillor country - and Nebraskans are all supposed to find Prairie Home Companion hilarious.  That is, unless they find Blue Collar TV and Larry the Cable Guy hilarious - liberal Nebraskans, that is, are all supposed to love Garrison Keillor, who is quite the self-declared liberal.  I really think he's just my uncle in disguise.  Except published and more inclined to turn things into jokes and, actually, more depressed.  My curmudgeon uncle has seemed to have become less mopey in recent years because he has decided to spend his money for a change - on trips to Greece and Alaska.  I could hate on him for not spending that money on my cousins and their medical bills and leaky house, but engaging with the world has made him more tolerable than Garrison Keillor and Prairie Home Companion. 

His new book, Liberty, is being reviewed by the New York Times in this week's Sunday Book Review, and while the reviewer of course thinks that he's one of the greatest American voices of our time (whenever people start to use words like "our time" or "this generation" I start to get very nervous), but look at the reviewer's web site: clearly he's trying to be Garrison Keillor for... Florida.  I'm sorry, Florida.  I don't think Liberty is about very much - substance is the kind of thing beyond Garrison Keillor - except, apparently, the chairman of some Independence Day campaign who has an affair with "a bosomy redhead".  And see, Garrison Keillor's weakness is women, and I hate writers like that.  They write a character who's clearly a stand-in for themselves, who expresses their opinions and mopes and grumbles about the absurdity of their neighbors, and then give their character (themselves) some hot woman who just lurves them.  Phillip Roth does the same thing.  So does Kurt Vonnegut.  Anybody who wonders why it is that I dislike Kurt Vonnegut and never read anything beyond Slaughterhouse-Five?  Besides the sickening lack of regard for "the enemy" (a trope Vonnegut falls victim to way too easily), he gives "himself" a stripper-wife who he spends the last half of the book fucking.  And it's like, what the fuck am I reading?  Who the fuck are you?  Because I don't think you're talking to me.  Tellingly, Garrison Keillor is sympathetic to Sarah Palin, who he probably also has a crush on: "Anyone with a heart has to hurt for how McCain has made a fool of her."  Really?  I don't.  Oops, guess I don't have a heart.  Garrison Keillor is after all the arbiter of who the "good people" are in our society.  

Not that that's the only reason I hate Garrison Keillor.  The main reason, actually, is that I don't think he's funny (I don't think most writers are - if you know anybody that writes like Hot Fuzz, though, let me know - that's stuff that Garrison Keillor would find crass, by the way).  I'm sure he thinks he's funny, but he is essentially writing to himself, and he is a boring, boring man.  Some people call him absurd.  He's not absurd.  Catch-22 is absurd.  This guy just writes about mediocre things that could definitely happen any day in any town in a totally passion-less manner.  What he really wants you to do is look down on everyone, to sneer at them derisively, to share in his resentment that stems from nothing (because seriously, what the fuck does this guy have to complain about?), to basically be a bitter, sullen, cocky old man with a shriveled up soul who places joy in bygone things so that he can never find joy again. 

I also don't like his attitude.  He's one of those people who says "you young people" and bemoans fast food and thinks, hilariously, that Minnesota provides a "test of one's mettle".  He likes things like civility and dislikes things like lines in airports.  I can't think of a better way to describe him than "small-minded".  He's a big fish in a small pond - I don't know if he's even left the country - and smugly smirks at all the other fish in the pond, mocking them for moving on with the 21st Century.  He mocks power and the people who have it but doesn't want it himself, oh no - politics is hopeless and you are all idiots, but don't give the hot potato to me.  So what?  Is anarchy the solution?  Jimmy Carter was a nice guy, but a terrible president.  I don't even like the way this guy criticizes the Republicans, and that's saying something for me.  Like this gem: "McCain seems willing to say anything, do anything, to get to the White House so he can go to war with Iran. If he needs to recline naked in a department store window, he would do that, or eat live chickens, or claim to be a reformer." 

This is called a man who profoundly misunderstands national politicians, and a lot of liberals in my hometown revel in his haphazard, uninformed commentary.  These are people who, you know, go to the Unitarian Church and give money to Nebraskans for Peace and live in comfortable houses and send their kids to Stanford and go to Jazz in June concerts and occasionally go to films that screen at the independent college theater (but nothing too disturbing!).  People completely mired in their own self-satisfied complacency, happy that they are miles above the wretched rednecks who they think surround them.  When these people criticize Bush it's hollow because they don't know what the hell they're talking about - they just get all blustery and crazy, and they convince no one of anything except that they think Bush is an idiot, though why he's an idiot, who knows.  There's this conception in the Liberal Midwest that Bush really is a president in a diaper and for some reason, he's just being allowed to randomly blow countries or welfare programs up by his goons who refuse to check him.  (Molly Ivins, from Texas, was guilty of proliferating this interpretation of Bush too)  But of course this isn't true - politics are a lot more complicated than that, and no amount of hysterical hand-wringing will make a difference.  In fact it'll just hurt the hand-wringers.  Bush needs to be taken in historical and international context - but taking things in context is something that Midwestern Liberals are totally incapable of.  They are the best representation of the worst trait in liberals: absolutism.  Incredible, fanatical absolutism, the stuff that they think belongs to Puritans because they don't see it in themselves.  I have developed a newfound respect for Neo-Cons at college - I disagree with their goals, but they are at least not self-righteous, moral absolutists (they pretend to be, sometimes, when it benefits them; this is a ruse) who refuse to play a role in the world.  Midwestern Liberals are laughably clueless when it comes to anything that is not their whitewashed suburb in their whitewashed state.  They know nothing of the world and they're fine with that, because what's America doing try to do things in the world?  Grumble grumble.  Shuffle shuffle. 

As some guy says, "I can't stand motherfuckers from Minnesota and Wisconsin who think they know jazz, and would like to lecture me on race relations." 

If some of these stupid whiners ran for office, I'd respect them more.  If they tried to do fucking ANYTHING with their lives, I'd respect them more.  Instead they just spend their money, little by little by very little, complaining about high prices all the way, pat the heads of some disabled/black kids, mock celebrities who don't even know they exist, complain about the internet, buy organic coffee, make plans to go to some screening of a weepy movie about Afghanistan, buy some books at Barnes & Noble, and write columns about how the nation is going to shit unless Americans can dredge up the small-town values that make us great and hold some massive national potluck.  They are the people who need to hear CRY MOAR the most.  I'm sure they think by voting they're doing some good in the world.  I'm also sure they whine about jury duty. 

They're one of two groups of people, it seems to me, who just truly can't wait to die and get the fuck off this planet and hate everyone on it.  The other group is the Evangelical Right.  Seriously, Midwestern Liberals have more in common with them than they'd like to think. 

For a completely different but very good reason to hate on Garrison Keillor, read this article.

Sadly, the only people who can criticize Garrison Keillor are conservatives, who usually just say he's being a liberal elitist.  Which, of course, he is. 

But the fact is, anybody who tries to own and embody an entire region - as Garrison Keillor has basically annexed the Midwest, especially for the entertainment of coastal liberals, who see his folksy stupidity as an endearing representation of liberals in the Great Plains - is a sadly deluded egomaniac. 

I vowed when it first came out never to see the movie of that Godforsaken radio show.  Well, I ended up watching it because there was nothing else on over the summer.  A) There was no plot.  B) Garrison Keillor was constantly flirting with Lindsay Lohan, which was just fucking bizarre, although not surprising.  C) I hate that fucking detective guy.  I don't care what his name is so don't tell me.  D) It was not funny and I'm not surprised the fictional radio show was cancelled. 

My advice to Midwestern Liberals?  Listen to "Dancing in the Dark".  In fact, just listen to Bruce Springsteen in general. 

I get up in the evening - and I ain't got nothing to say
I come home in the morning - I go to bed feeling the same way
I ain't nothing but tired - man I'm just tired and bored with myself
Hey baby, I could use just a little help

You can't start a fire, you can't start a fire without a spark
You can't start a fire sitting around crying over a broken heart
You can't start a fire worrying about your little world falling apart
Even if we're just dancing in the dark

hooray for colin powell